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Whether you’re seeing his colorful works out on the street, or in the gallery, Kenny Scharf has one of the most instantly recognizable styles in the contemporary art world. Deitch Projects downtown is currently hosting Inner and Outer Space, an ambitious exhibit of Sharf’s newest works which features several distinct collections that provide evidence of Scharf’s enthusiasm for expanding his oeuvre, while staying true to the playful characteristics of his work that his fans love the most.

You can get a hint of what you’re in for before you even stop inside the gallery

The faces are melting in Kenny Scharf’s new paintings. “Things are disintegrating,” says the artist. “I am reacting to our increasingly out-of-control situation.” Scharf’s work continues to be infused by his inexhaustible optimism and his sense of fun, but there has always been an engagement with profound issues beneath the façade. Ecology, the environment, and capitalist excess have long been central themes.

Kenny Scharf’s work has always combined and contrasted the pop culture he absorbed growing up in Los Angeles with the important innovations in modern and contemporary art. His earlier work fused Dali and Disney. More recently, he has been in dialogue with Pollock and Abstract Expressionism. In the new work, he merges his distinct style with color field and stain painting. “I like to connect with every movement in 20th-century art,” Scharf explains. “I make new hybrids, taking it all in and putting it in a blender.”

Scharf is very enthusiastic about his new “sloppy style” that characterizes the major paintings in the exhibition. Rows of faces disintegrate into colorful drips reminiscent of both New York School painting and the serial imagery of minimal art. In these new works, Scharf is striving to create clear and simple forms that resonate with meaning. He feels liberated and excited, adding that “it is so much fun.”

Like his artistic colleagues from his early years in New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Scharf studied cartoons as a way to intensify figurative expression. He makes use of cartoon faces to express emotion with abstract power.

In the past, Kenny found many of the items integrated into his art in the garbage,and even today he still stops his car when he finds plastic toys and TV sets thrown away on the street. These discarded plastic objects have inspired the two other bodies of work featured in the show, one being TV Bax.

The TV Bax are painted on the plastic backs of discarded television sets. Like the toys, the TV backs have a disconcerting anthropomorphic quality. Scharf wonders if their anonymous designers created these plastic covers, which are different for every model, to resemble a face.

TV Bax, Detail

Scharf finds these thrown-away toys and TV backs to be poignant objects, resonant with emotion. “Each of these objects carries a story,” Scharf explains. He thinks about how people might have struggled and sacrificed to buy these toys and TVs, and about the intense relationship that children and families have with them. Scharf resurrects the lives of these inanimate objects in his work. He also notes that garbage keeps changing with technology. The backs of TV sets used to have large protruding “noses.” Now they are flatter and more similar to a canvas.

Another new collection, his Assemblage Vivant Tableaux Plastiques, inspired by the Nouveau Realistes, are constructed from his stock of recycled plastic toys. These wall sculptures, which mix assorted toy parts with Scharf’s whimsical animated faces, are my favorite items in the exhibit.

Installation View

Assemblage Vivant Tableaux Plastiques, Detail

Since his childhood, Scharf has been fascinated by outer space. Space travel and the portrayal of infinite space have long been central themes. In his life and in his work, he tries to eliminate boundaries and borders. As he pursues his dialogue with the great painters of the New York School, he is increasingly preoccupied with the inner space of painting. His exploration of inner space creates a dynamic tension with his passion for outer space. With his characteristic exuberance and his moral voice, Scharf reformulates his unique combination of Pollock and Pop to create a vibrant new body of work.

Kenny Scharf’s Inner and Outer Space will be on Exhibit Through December 22nd, 2017 at Deitch Projects, Located at 18 Wooster Street (Just North of Canal) in NYC.

Artist Kenny Scharf rose to prominence in the 1980s New York art scene as part of a now-legendary group of artists including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, but he was born and raised in Los Angeles, and now makes southern California his home. If you also live in LA, or plan to visit, and you love art, then make a point to check out the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA), which, as the name suggests, features exhibits exclusively by California artists, architects and designers. If you are nearby, then you also have to check out this alloy repair company that’s nearby, they can take one look at your car and say if you need repairs and have them done in no time. Although the museum’s exhibits change approximately every six months, there is one permanent exhibit by Kenny Scharf, which happens to be in the parking garage adjacent the building; the Kosmic Krylon Garage! Let’s take a look inside!

When You See This Face, You Have Arrived at the Kosmic Krylon Garage

In the summer of 2004, Kenny Scharf: California Grown opened at the PMCA as the Museum’s first tri-level exhibition, with paintings installed and a tape of The Groovenians — Scharf’s animated show for Cartoon Network — screening on the second floor, his bronze sculptures in the third-floor Founders’ Gallery, and the transformation of the PMCA garage into the Kosmic Krylon Garage.

After the exhibition closed, the colorful murals spray-painted by Scharf over the course of a week remained on the walls of the garage and continue as a permanent installation. The Kosmic Krylon Garageis on view during regular Museum hours. Parking in the garage is free of charge.

Check Out My Photos of Some of the Artwork Inside the Garage:

This Angry Mushroom Cloud covers most of the very rear wall of the garage.

The lot was almost full on the day of our visit, so I did not get many photos without pre owned cars in them, sorry!

If you remember Kenny’s Bowery Mural installation that went up in late 2010, you will recognize these little guys as being indicative of his signature characters.

Find out more about the Kosmic Krylon Garage, and plan your visit to the Pasadena Museum of California Art, at This Link!

Do you like Kenny Scharf? I sure do. I’ve seen his fun artwork everywhere in the city — from huge murals and sculptures to paintings and toys, cars and golf carts and even…mannequins! Scharf ‘sSwirley mannequin is part of the Ralph Pucci: The Art of The Mannequin exhibit, which is up through October 25th at the Museum of Arts and Design in Columbus Circle.

Here she is with some of her friends!

Scharf actually designed many different mannequins in his career, and you can also see some of their heads at the exhibit, which I recommend you check out before it is too late!

Andy Warhol was a pioneer in bringing the commercial image to the world of fine art, and now it’s always fun and fascinating to see how ubiquitous pop culture images, such as the department store mannequin, come into being through a fine art process.

Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin is the first museum exhibition to explore the work of renowned New York-based designer Ralph Pucci, who is widely regarded for his innovative approach to the familiar form of the mannequin. Having collaborated with luminaries such as Diane von Furstenberg, Patrick Naggar, Andrée Putman, Kenny Scharf, Anna Sui, Isabel and Ruben Toledo and Christy Turlington, Pucci’s mannequins not only expand the parameters of this ubiquitous sculptural form, but reflect major cultural trends of the past three decades.

As Pucci was building his business in the 1970s, the notion of the Super Model — the living mannequin with a personality — emerged. Pucci captured this catalytic moment in his work, finding inspiration from sources as varied as Greek and Roman statues and the performance costumes of the New York Dolls.

Pucci personified the previously anonymous form in new and challenging ways, creating visions of physical beauty that were more specific, empowered, and diverse than the fashion industry had previously allowed. More than commercial armatures or sculptural forms, his mannequins became agents of change in our attitudes to the body, to fashion, and to individual identity.

In addition to over 30 of Pucci’s most important mannequins The Art of the Mannequin, features an in-gallery recreation of his sculpture studio, and short films you can watch in the gallery that reveal the step-by-step process on mannequin making, which is extremely enlightening. Pucci’s master sculptor and longtime collaborator, Michael Evert, will be in residence during the exhibition’s run to give visitors a first-hand look at the creative process, from initial modeling in clay to the rendering of the fiberglass end-product.

Mannequin Heads By Kenny Scharf

Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin will be on Exhibit Through October 25th, 2015 at the Museum of Arts and Design, Located at 2 Columbus Circle in NYC. Visit This Link for more information.

If you haven’t been to Coney Island at least once this summer, you owe it to yourself to make the trip. Most residents of Manhattan who live, say, from midtown to the east village area, can make it from the door to the shore in under 90 minutes, depending on how the trains are running. And for half the ride, the trains run above ground, so that makes it a bit more interesting of a ride as well. Even if you are not a “Beach Person” (raises hand), and the rides at Luna Park make you barf (keeps hand raised) there is so much to see and do at Coney Island that all you need to have is an adventurous spirit, and maybe some sunblock.

Art Wall By Kenny Scharf

If you are a street art lover, you will absolute want to plan a visit to see the Coney Art Walls, a public art project conceived by art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch, which is going to be up until Halloween. Coney Art Walls features more than 25 colorful murals created by some of the most well-known street artists in the world. We spotted many of our favorites artists including How & Nosm, Roa, Buff Monster, Kenny Scharf and Ron English, as well as a selection of artists who are still up-and-coming. It’s a great mix of talent.

Art Wall By Ron English

The walls are interspersed with re-purposed cargo containers to create a pop-up truck food village, with food sold by vendors organized by Smorgasburg. Concerts are also held in the space.